Welcome to the Running in Cork blog, home of the Cork running community. This is the largest website in Cork & Munster for news on road races and general running news. Included are a current race calendar, race previews, photos, results as well as some local, national and international news items.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

The annual Cloyne 5km road race takes place in East Cork on Tuesday, the 31st of July 2018 at 8pm. As races go, this is a reasonably flat and fast course. There are no real hills as such, just a few short sections where the road rises by a few metres at most. Outside of the Centre Park Road course in Cork City, it doesn't get much flatter. If you want to try for a fast 5k time, then this is the one to do.

If you are coming from the Cork city, then Cloyne is just a 22-25 minute drive from the Jack Lynch tunnel. Considering the number of runners within say a 30 minute drive of it, the race is likely to attract a large crowd.

From the organisers...The race will be chip timed, and the route (start/finish) and HQ all remain the same as last year. Registrations on the day of the race will open in the School from 3.00pm for anyone that wishes to enter earlier in the day.

Preview...A full preview of the course with maps, directions, photos and description can be seen HERE

After a prolonged period of dry weather, the rain unfortunately arrived just in time for this 4 mile road race near Midleton in East Cork.. Despite the conditions, a total of 192 runners still out for this 4 mile road race.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

This 5km road race in Carraig na bhFear is coming up on Tuesday the 21st of August 2018 at 7:30pm.

The race is organised with the assistance of Carraig na bhFear AC and results will be published after the race. From the organisers.... Carraig na bhFear GAA are hosting a fundraising 5k run in Carraig na bhFear on Tues 21st August at 7:30pm. Admission is €10 and a Family of 4 for €30. Registration begins at 6:30pm at the Primary School on the night. You can run, walk or crawl around the course as you please and it promises to be a great night of fun and chat. Tea, Coffee and refreshments will be available for all afterwards in the school.

Carraig na bhFear is just 10kms to the north of Cork City so this one should be of interest to a lot of runners.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

This 4 mile road race near Midleton is coming up on Thursday the 26th of July 2018...

Located just to the south-east of Midleton, this 4 mile race is on nice quiet country roads and should be within easy reach for a lot of people. The entry fee is €10 for runners and you can enter online HERE.

You can also enter on the night.

The race is being organised by the Ballinacurra Villagers Running Club in association with Ballinacurra GAA.

Monday, July 23, 2018

The South Dublin 10k on Sunday the 22nd of July attracted a large field of 2249 runners making it one of the largest 10k races in the country.

The first woman across the line was Lizzie Lee from Cork with a time of 33m 24s. What's pretty amazing is that Lizzie actually finished in 3rd place overall with only two men managing to stay ahead of her. Lizzie's team mate John Shine of Leevale AC was the 3rd man home.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

In this guest post from John Walsh of Ballycotton, he recounts the 1978 national marathon in Tullamore...

HOOPER WAS JUST TOO HOT FOR HIS RIVALS ...By John Walshe (Evening Echo 03/07/2018)

The month of June is usually favourable to most outdoor activities, but running 26-plus miles may not be one, as participants in the recent Cork City Marathon can testify.

Forty years ago this month, on a Sunday afternoon, the BLE National Marathon took place in Tullamore. Like the Limerick championship two years earlier which was the selection race for that summer’s Olympics, the European Championships in Prague of 1978 ensured that all of the country’s long distance men would toe the line in the midland town.

The preview in the previous week’s Cork Examiner stated that a record entry of 104 had been received. This included a number from Britain including 20-year-old Alan McGee, the 1977 Fell Runner of the Year who had recorded 2:21 in his marathon debut, along with the likes of Norman Deakin (Stoke) with a best of 2:17:20, Doug Gunstone from Edinburgh (2:19) and Kevin Best who had run a fast time for 20 miles.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Top Cork sprinter Phil Healy set a new national record when she ran 22.99 seconds in the 200mat the Cork City Sports last night. The 23 year old Balndon AC athlete from Ballineen recently broke the Irish 100m record.

The Carrigtwohill 5km road race is coming up on Wednesday, the 18th of July 2018.

The venue for the race is Barryscourt Castle just to the south of the town of Carrigtwohill in East Cork. This race always attracts a large crowd every year and is bound to attract a large turnout this year again.

The race which starts at 8pm costs €10 to enter and all proceeds are going to charity. There is also a walk starting at 6:30pm and that costs €5 to enter. You can also enter online HERE

Course Preview........A full preview with directions, map and photos can be seen HERE

Sunday, July 15, 2018

For the vast majority of road races, the first person home is nearly always a man. For this 5k race in Banteer however there was an exception as Martina Kiely of St.Finbarr's AC ran a time of 18m 14s to be the first across the line.

Organised in association with Mount Hillary AC, there was a modest field of 61 finishers.

The Irish women's 4x100m relay team won silver at the World U-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland today. The team of Molly Scott, Gina Akpe-Moses, Ciara Neville and Patience Jumbo-Gula ran a national under-20 record time of 43.90 to finish behind Germany and in front of Great Britain to take Silver.

Friday, July 13, 2018

The West Cork Islands Run Series consists of running events on islands in West Cork during the months of July and August 2018. While the first one on Bere Island is a timed event, the remainder are more of a fun run format with the aim of getting people to visit the islands.

Updated Fri 13th July..... All of the original 750 places are gone. As of this morning, West Waterford AC have made an additional places available. Click on the link above and enter asap if you want to do this half-marathon.

A record 358 runners turned out for this years Coachford 5 mile road race which was held on Thurs 12th July 2018. In contrast to a lot of other races which have shown declining numbers, this one jumped by 32% !

Photos... (Updated 13th July @17:04am)1) Joe Murphy has a gallery HERE and of the finish HERE2) Mick Dooley has a gallery HERE3) The organisers have three galleries.. Start and one mile mark # 1 and # 2

The village of Ardfield is located just to the south of Clonakilty in West Cork and is a lovely part of the county. The roads in general are relatively quiet and there are extensive views out over the West Cork countryside and coastline.

Next Friday the 20th of July 2018, there is a 10 km road race in the village. The course has been accurately measured by Jones Counter and the event has an Athletics Ireland permit.

The race is suitable for runners and walkers and it will be chip timed by Titan Timing.

With the annual road race promoted by Youghal Athletic Club taking place this week, it might be an opportune time to look back at a similar event of 20 years ago which was held in conjunction with probably the biggest sporting occasion to hit the seaside town, writes John Walshe

Anyone in their mid-twenties and upwards can no doubt recall the summer of 1998 when the Tour de France came to these shores. The excitement and hype hasn’t been experienced since but will hopefully be replicated on a similar scale next June with the staging of IRONMAN Ireland, Cork, in the town.

For months beforehand the arrival of the greatest bike race on earth was eagerly awaited, but it didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts. Willy Voet, a soigneur in the French Festina team, was stopped by French customs agents as he tried to cross the French-Belgian border and in his Festina team car the agents found large quantities of syringes and controlled substances including narcotics, EPO, growth hormones, testosterone and amphetamines

The full impact of the drugs scandal which would later discredit that Tour (only 86 riders of the 189 would make it to the finish in Paris) hadn’t yet impacted on the general public when the race set out from Enniscorthy to Cork on the third stage on the Monday morning of July 14th. However, just as the mass of cyclists reached the outskirts of Youghal, tragedy struck the man in the Yellow Jersey, Chris Boardman, who crashed heavily into a wall and had to be airlifted to hospital.

Boardman had won the prologue the previous Saturday and was one of the favoured sprinters in the race, having won an individual pursuit gold medal at the 1992 Olympic Games. So, if you ever need a trick question for a table quiz or the like, you could always ask the participants to ‘name the Olympic champion who hit the wall in Youghal!’

Both Youghal and Midleton towns had built festivals around the Tour and on the previous Thursday evening Youghal AC played its part with the promotion of a four-mile race. Held on the same circuit that will be used for two laps on Thursday night, on that occasion it consisted of three times around the town plus four hundred metres.

As can be seen from the attached results (below), numbers taking part compared to the present day were comparatively small, with just 72 runners plus the man in the wheelchair, Jerry Forde, who will no doubt be there again on this occasion. The winner was Roy Fahy of Leevale in a time of 20:10, just three seconds ahead of his clubmate Jason Foulkes. Fahy later joined the East Cork club in whose colours he would go on to win the Cork City Marathon a decade later.

Eric Meade (East Cork) finished third in 21:23 ahead of James Murphy of Grange-Fermoy (21:41) with local Youghal man John Malone fifth in 21:51. It was another local runner, the legendary Mary Sweeney, who won a closely fought women’s race, her time of 24 minutes flat giving her six seconds to spare over Catherine Hennessy from New Ross with Joan Hough (St Finbarr’s) third in 24:20.

An interesting finisher in 47th place in a time of 27:16 was one Robert Heffernan. Then aged 20, the Togher athlete’s international walking career would begin in earnest the following year when he finished 13th at the European U23 20km in Sweden.

Of those 72 finishers, at least a dozen will probably toe the line again on Thursday evening. However, as they say, a lot of water has passed under Youghal Bridge in the past two decades and sadly for some their times for the 5km will probably be a lot slower than what they ran for four miles on that July evening back in 1998.

1) From the end of June 2017 last year, membership in Athletics Ireland has dropped 1%. 2) Juvenile membership has dropped 2.2%.3) Senior adult membership (20-34 year olds) has dropped 4.4%.4) Masters membership (adults aged 35 and older) has risen 2.7%.

For the last few years, juvenile membership has been growing steadily and has added to the overall Athletics Ireland membership figure. This has now stalled.

Senior membership reached a peak in 2014 and has been declining since then. The only sector that is growing is the Masters category which is due to what is termed 'recreational runners' joining clubs around the country.

Cork... The picture in Cork follows a similar pattern in the last 12 months. Overall club membership has dropped 2%. Juvenile membership has dropped by 8.8% which seems pretty large in contrast to the national figure of 2.2%.

In terms of adults, senior membership has dropped 5.7% while the masters membership is up 9.9%. The growth in adult membership is mainly due to the creation of small regional clubs around the county like Doneraile, Beara, Durrus, Churchtown, Shandrum which have lots of masters runners.

For adult membership in clubs in Cork City, membership has dropped over the last year. The combined total of adult membership in Leevale, Eagle, St.Finbarr's, Togher and Watergrasshill is down 4% compared to last year.

There was a 21% drop in numbers for this years Cork BHAA CPO 5k road race in Mahon in Cork City with 260 runners taking part. That's down almost 50% in three years.

There didn't seem to be any major factors that would impact on the race as the weather was fine and there was no World cup match. It just seems to follow the general trend at the moment of an easing back of the race numbers.

On a positive note, there seemed to be some new names appearing in the top three.

Wednesday, July 04, 2018

A new junior 2km parkrun started in Cobh at the end of May 2018 and the numbers are shown above. As with all new events, there is an initial surge due to the novelty and it has slowly dropped off to about the 100 mark now.

What suprised me in particular was just how many are taking part. When I first heard of this event a few months back, I thought it might get something like 30-40 children every week. When I looked at the numbers today, I noticed that they're getting a lot more than that.

This 2km parkrun is held every Sunday morning Carrignafoy, Cobh at 9:30am and caters for 4 to 14 year olds.... a bit like the 5k parkruns on Saturdays except for kids. The event is completely free and all adults need to do is to register their children to get a unique bar code so that they can get their times later. More info on the Cobh Junior parkrun HERE

At the moment, there are only two Junior parkruns in Munster...one in Cobh and one in Tralee. There must be loads of small parks in Cork and Munster where similar event could be hosted?

It was announced recently that the Marquee site next to Pairc Ui Chaoimh has been sold for €15 million with the potential for 1000 homes going there.

As can be seen from the photo above, the site outlined in Red is next to the Centre Park Road / Monahan Rd circuit (in yellow) which is used for the annual Cork BHAA John Buckley Sports 5k.

A few years back, this circuit which is close to the centre of Cork City was used on a regular basis for 5k races. As the Marquee site gets developed and with a new bridge going across to Tivoli, this whole area is going to become a lot busier in the future. It's probably only a matter of time before a 5k race will be impossible to be held there.

Tuesday, July 03, 2018

The annual Coachford Autumn Festival 5 mile road race to the west of Cork City is coming up on Thursday the 12th of July 2018.

This should be particular interest to anyone west of the city as there aren't that many races in this particular area.

The entry fee is €10 online or €12 on the night. Proceeds from the race go towards Marymount Hospice, CUH Childrens Unit and local charities. There is also an optional event t-shirt for €8 extra.

From the organisers...*Registration in Coachford GAA Complex from 6pm. €12 Entry , Chip Timing.Race Starting @ 8pm Sharp, Fully Stewarded. (Course measured with Jones Counter by Kevin Cummins)€12 on the day registration OR €10 online. All online registrations entered into a draw for a family pass to Ballyhass, Coachford. Online registration opened until midnight on July 10th. We will have some t-shirts on the night for you to purchase on a first come first served basis.https://register.primoevents.com/ps/event/COACHFORD5mileroadrace20182

Preview......More info about the course including maps and photos can be seen HERE

A total of 172 runners turned out for this years Dromcollogher 4 mile road race in Co.Limerick, up from the 157 of last year. This is a race with a long tradition and many runners from Cork have taken part in it over the years.

Total Pageviews

How to...

Follow by Email

Subscribe To

Contact...

About Me

Quote...

'If you want to win something, run 100 metres. If you want to experience something, run a marathon' - Emil Zatopek, Winner of the 5k, 10k and Marathon, Helsinki Olympics, 1952 and broke the existing Olympic record in each event.